Paramount Pictures released a new trailer for the highly-anticipated action movie Top Gun: Maverick on Monday.
Top Gun: Maverick, directed by Joseph Kosinski, is the sequel to the 1986 hit movie Top Gun, and stars Tom Cruise, Miles Teller, Jennifer Connelly, and Jon Hamm, among others.
Tom Cruise returns in Top Gun: Maverick as Pete “Maverick” Mitchell.
The new trailer for Top Gun: Maverick comes after the first trailer was released in July 2019.
Since fans saw Maverick flying Navy fighter jets and performing dangerous stunts in both trailers, they’ve been asking whether Cruise flew real fighter jets in the movie or whether all the flying we see in the trailers is CGI?
If you’ve also wondered, here is what you need to know.
Did Tom Cruise fly in Top Gun: Maverick?
Tom Cruise confirmed when he appeared at San Diego Comic-Con in July 2019 they used real aircraft in the movie.
“Everything you see in this film, obviously it’s for real … we’re working with the Navy. All of the flying that you see in this picture, everything is real,” Cruise said (start 3:31 in the video below ). “I really wanted to give you all an experience of what it is to be inside that aircraft.”
Cruise first declared back in July 2015 while promoting his movie Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation, that he wanted to fly real jets in Top Gun: Maverick and not do CGI.
“I’d like to fly those jets again, but we got to do all the jets practical, no CGI on the jets,” he said (start the video below at 0:29). “I’m saying right now no CGI on the jets.”
After Cruise confirmed that all flying in the upcoming movie is real and that they did not do CGI, fans have been asking whether he flew real Navy fighter jets in Top Gun: Maverick.
Did Cruise fly real Navy fighter jets?
Tom Cruise is a licensed pilot, but he is not known to have learned how to fly military jets. Entertainment Weekly reported in November 2018 that Cruise underwent flight training for the movie.
Paramount also reportedly confirmed that the movie star flew “certain aircraft” in the movie, but they were not U.S. military jets because U.S. military law prohibits civilians from flying “government-owned fighters jets.”
What this means is that while scenes showing Cruise flying in a cockpit are real, he was not flying real Navy fighter jets. He was only flying “some other types of aircraft” that were not U.S. military jets.
However, there are flight scenes in the trailers that appear to show real Navy fighter jets taking off and landing on aircraft carriers. Such scenes, if real, would have been performed by qualified and authorized military personnel as military law requires.
Top Gun Maverick is expected to hit theaters on June 26, 2020.